Tag Archives: voting

If Romney wins, which seems increasingly likely, he must win by a landslide for the security of our nation.

More and more today people believe that the majority of the population agree with them. Call it part of our human capability of rationalization, blame the media echo chambers and liberal bastions of big cities where people can go their whole lives without meeting a single person they disagree with substantively. Whatever the cause, people, especially people on the left or supporting the left, think that they are a significant majority, and that people who don’t think the way they do are backward, ignorant, abusive, small, mean, vulgar, cave men, knuckle dragging, pea-brained, idiots, etc.

Recent polls indicate Romney is ahead by a slim but significant margin, but they also indicate that huge percentages of Obama supporters are absolutely convinced their candidate will win. It’s one thing to be confident, it’s another to be confident in the face of increasing evidence otherwise.

Or perhaps that’s the problem: They aren’t seeing any evidence otherwise because they tend to get their news from sources they agree with (Fox News? Fox News? Fox News?). They don’t know anybody personally who plans to vote for Romney. They never see them on TV except when there’s something odd or stupid to be said about them. There is nothing that intrudes into their consciousness which gives them any inkling of the level of support for Romney or the level antipathy and discontent there is with President Obama.

This spells a bit of trouble.

If you were absolutely convinced your candidate was going to win, and everybody you knew was planning on voting for him, and all you heard on the news and in papers and any other sources of information and infotainment was the idiocy of the challengers supporters and the ubiquity of your own candidates supporters, and then you watched the election returns come in and you saw your candidate lose, there would be hell to pay.

Fraud! You’d charge. You’d take to the streets. The Occupy movement and the Tea Party would be nothing compared to your outrage and that of your friends and neighbors and everybody else who voted for your candidate.

This is why, when Romney wins, he must win by a landslide. It is not enough to say “I’m in a safe state, I’ll stay home because he’s already got our electoral college votes“. No, each and every person must and should vote because, if the election is anything but a landslide, even a victory for Romney will be a hollow one.

The first steps towards undoing the dissension and division the Great Uniter has foisted upon us will have to include those who thought he was the messiah recognizing they are not an insurmountable majority. They’ll have to recognize first that people exist who disagree with them, and then that those people are reasonable people with reasonable goals and reasonable reasons for having supported someone besides their beloved. Only once they realize the world is populated with all kinds of people will they begin to be able to accept they may not have a monopoly on common sense.

President Obama’s campaign saw fit to release this ad yesterday, and I’m still trying to figure out why. I don’t like assuming the worst about people, but it seems to me that in this case, the worst may be the most accurate.

A woman who thinks that voting for anybody validates her as a woman is a woman with a small view of herself. A woman who thinks that voting for a specific person as the only reasonable course because of her gender is a woman with a small view of womanhood.

As a man I cannot pretend to understand womanhood. As a married man I’ve been mostly disabused of any notion that I might come even close. But if my wife came to me and told me she had to vote for Romney in order to validate herself as a woman, she and I would have a deep discussion about what she thinks it means to be a woman.

Heck, if an ad was released showing a woman claiming that a vote for Romney was the only thing a woman could reasonable do and still call herself a woman, leaving out all the stuff about the “first time” and other sexual innuendo, there would be hell to pay whether it was released by the Romney campaign or simply some over-enthused supporter.

In short, I hope Lena comes to recognize her value and validity as a person stem from the fact she is a person, and that her value and validity as a woman stem from the fact that she is a woman, and that neither of those have anything whatsoever to do with whose name she punches on the voting card every four years.

On a recent Michael Medved show, a caller identifying himself as a moderately liberal high school political science teacher stated that the conservative force he fears most in America is from the Christian conservatives who allow their theology to inform their politics.

To him, so long as your politics do not inform your theology and your theology is kept far away from your politics, you’re OK. They may agree, but only incidentally.

There’s a problem with that: humans cannot, by nature, exist in a dichotomous state.

In fact, to demand such a personal internal segregation of ones internal beliefs and external actions is to request something dangerous and displays a profound ignorance of human nature and need.

First, everyone has a theology. Commonly called our “beliefs”. It is our understanding, findings, or opinions regarding the nature (or lack thereof) of God. An atheist has a theology as surely as a Christian, they are just convinced there is no god.

One’s beliefs regarding God informs one’s ideas on life, purpose, meaning, history, and the future. This is indisputable and is not a value judgment, merely a statement of fact.

One’s understanding of life, it’s purposes and meanings, history and the future, definitely informs one’s political persuasions. I vote with a goal and purpose. I don’t roll dice (often) and I don’t sell my vote. Though both those actions would allow us to infer your understanding of life and likely, your theology.

I am a whole human, with will and purpose. I try not to say one thing and act another. Yet even should I engage in such hypocrisy, accidentally or purposefully, there is a consistency to the failure. My hypocritical life would have a goal and purpose: likely a hope for self-aggrandizement or gain for some deeply and closely held belief.

Watching Chariots of Fire last night with my wife, we came upon the scene where Eric Liddell has found out the heats for his race is on Sunday and is now meeting with the crown prince and the Olympic committee. Young Lord Lindsey has offered his own, longer, race to Eric as a solution and as the meeting is dispersing the Duke of Sutherland and Lord Birkenhead discuss what has just occurred:

Duke of Sutherland:A sticky moment, George. Lord Birkenhead: Thank God for Lindsay. I thought the lad had us beaten. Duke of Sutherland:He did have us beaten, and thank God he did. Lord Birkenhead:I don’t quite follow you. Duke of Sutherland:The “lad”, as you call him, is a true man of principles and a true athlete. His speed is a mere extension of his life, its force. We sought to sever his running from himself.Lord Birkenhead:For his country’s sake, yes. Duke of Sutherland:No sake is worth that, least of all a guilty national pride.

The Duke of Sutherland has the correct diagnosis of the issue: we can no more separate one part of a man’s soul from his other parts than we can parts of his body and expect them both to continue living.

I am a Christian. I am convinced of God’s existence and His divine will. I try to live my life in the salvation offered by the death of Jesus, God’s only begotten Son and according to His laws.

I hold these beliefs in faith, not a hope in wishful thinking. Faith is not a firmly held belief in unprovable or illogical ideas, it is the belief in things proven and yet unseen.

My faith informs my life. I try to live my life according to the law of God. And not just those parts lived in private. I fail miserably more often than I succeed, but what is life without a contest, without a goal?

If I were to deny the influence of my theology on any part of my life, I would be trying to live as though I were two separate people within the same physical body: It just doesn’t work.

And so, to you political science teacher, I hope that you will always live your entire life according to the dictates of your conscience and that your theology informs your choices. I pray that your theology will grow and you will find and find faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and countless millions since them. And yet, even if you do not, I still pray that you will be a complete person with one goal and purpose.

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The Author

I'm a 30-something father, technologist, husband, Christian, musician, and sometimes blogger with a zest for life and a passion for more things than there is time for. I'm married to the woman of my dreams, working in a great job in my favorite career, all while enjoying this wonderful thing we call life.